Mobile phones in Africa: How much do we really know?
Jeffrey James · 2013
Mobile telephony is considered to be particularly important for development, especially in countries lacking a fixed-line infrastructure and those where a lot of sharing takes place (see Chapter 4). There is some evidence that mobile phones raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big in developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points (Waverman et al. 2005). Many see mobiles as an opportunity for developing countries to close the digital divide, especially those in Africa. Yet, we do not seem to possess consistent data on mobile phones in Africa. Different organizations and authors use different definitions. Examination of the available data reveals that it is often still unclear what is meant by it – and what is not. Moreover, as a result of different definitions and concepts there are many different figures on the presence of mobile phones, ranging from almost zero in the narrowest definition (ownership) to almost 100 per cent in the broadest definition (access). These differences matter, among other reasons, because they inform national policy-making towards the sector and international efforts to bridge the digital divide between Africa and other parts of the world. This chapter accordingly seeks to clarify the conceptual confusion that underlies the grossly different estimates of the extent to which mobile telephony exists on the continent. To this end we employ a framework that distinguishes between mobile phone subscribers, mobile phone owners, mobile phone users, those who benefit from usage and those who have access to this technology. This classification, we feel, will provide the reader with a better understanding of the state of mobile telephony in Africa and will have important implications for the type of data that are needed but at present are unavailable. The categories that are identified, moreover, help us better to understand different views as to the extent of the digital divide in mobile phones between Africa and the rest of the world.